Update: Here’s a new video of the Wind Wizard, this time with some manual tuning after the initial pass. Done in version 6.2.3 of the Modeler.
As the main person behind SpeedTree’s wind algorithm I can say this without hurting anyone’s feelings – tuning the wind in SpeedTree can be kind of hard. It pains me to say it but I know it’s true. It’s always been possible to get nice results, but I doubt anyone would describe the journey as enjoyable.
We’ve done something about it in the latest release. First, we’ve imposed absolute guidelines on what the wind strength means. It’s been open ended before (and still can be) but we’ve added some preset wind conditions like calm, breezy, and stormy to help tune your model for a variety of uses. Second, we’ve added the Wind Wizard (pictured below) to set reasonable wind values throughout the model based the answers to a few questions.
After you answer the questions and click OK the Wind Wizard goes to work. It sets the wind levels, wind weights, and wind weight curves on every generator in the model. It also sets reasonable animation options, frequencies, distances, wind adherences, etc. on the fan object. The result is an animated 3D tree model that should at least be in the ball park of what you would like for your final result. You’re free to tune the results as you see fit via the familiar mechanisms. The video below shows the effects of running the Wind Wizard on the Coconut Palm in our library.
If you’re an existing 6.x customer, you should have received this feature via an automatic update. If you’re new to SpeedTree or have an older version, you can try it out by downloading the latest evaluation version from our site. Also, look for an updated animated tree model library to be released soon with the latest wind settings on every model.